


Not Like That

by lucyditty



Series: Stories for a Boy [1]
Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Light Angst, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 01:20:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13447500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucyditty/pseuds/lucyditty
Summary: “Sungjong-ah, do you love me?” The words leave his lips before he has a chance to second guess himself."Of course."-----In which Sungjong doesn't understand that his roommate is in love with him.





	Not Like That

“Sungjong-ah, do you love me?” The words leave his lips before he has a chance to second guess himself.

Crickets and the rustle of a page turning fills the beat of silence.

“Of course, hyung,” Sungjong says. There isn’t a hint of anything in his voice to betray the statement.

Lee Howon – or Hoya, as his friends have come to call him – presses his back firmer into his headboard and squeezes the base of his tense fingers in a nervous tick. He shoots a glance at his unassuming roommate, sitting on his own bed, at the other end of their dorm room.

“Not,” he starts and his voice cracks. He pauses before trying again, softer. “Not like that.”

Sungjong looks up from the book he’s reading (the musty scent of library still lingering on its pages).

“Not like…” He raises a brow. “Not like what?”

They spend a moment to just look at each other, Howon holding a breath as a warm breeze from the open window ruffles some papers on his desk. Sungjong places his book down beside him and slides off the bed to slide the glass window close.

Sitting at the foot of Howon’s small bed, when Sungjong adjusts his sitting position, the toes of their feet brush. Howon bites his lip.

“Not like…” he begins. Running a hand through his hair he shifts his eyes away. “Just _not_. Do you love me, Sungjong-ah?”

Sungjong frowns.

“I thought I just said I do-,”

“I know. I know but…” Howon cuts in. He forces his hands into his lap and shakes his head. “No, never mind. I’m going to go take a shower.”

Howon makes a move to leave but Sungjong grabs (more like places a hand on) his arm and that’s all Howon needs to stop all action. He doesn’t want to look, but his head involuntarily turns to the boy beside him.

Sungjong has such a deep look of concern in his eyes that it takes Howon one giant shuttering breath and painful bite to his inner cheek to not envelop the boy and shove both of their bodies into the spring of the mattress. And much to his relief (or utter frustration and pure dismay), Sungjong does not take notice to the stiffness of Howon’s body.

“No, not ‘nevermind’.” Sungjong says as he guides Hoya back onto the bed. “Something is obviously bothering you and it’s been affecting you.”

Howon does not turn his eyes away from Sungjong, but he doesn’t make a sound either.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sungjong asks.

His head tilts and the tips of his hair just fall over the round of his eyes. Howon takes note of this as his gaze traces a path down the slant of Sungjong’s nose to the dip just above his lip. Sungjong still has a gentle hand placed at the crook of his elbow. Hoya swallows.

“Do you love me, Sungjong-ah…” are the only words he can think to say.

Sungjong furrows his brows and he’s frowning again. And something in Howon’s chest clenches.

“I don’t know what you’re expecting me to say,” Sungjong admits. “I already said that I do love you, hyun-,”

“No. That’s it.” Howon throws himself off the bed (in the processes pulling away from the touch of Sungjong’s fingers). “That’s it. That’s _it_!”

Howon pads small steps around their dorm room, fingers clutched in the strands of is hair. A turning knot forming in the pit of his stomach, Howon can feel the frustration and desperation boiling in him – threatening to overflow.

“Hyung, I don’t…”

“No, Sungjong-ah. Not like that. That’s what I mean not like-,” Hoya heaves. He turns back to Sungjong and sees that _look_. _That_ look. That quizzical and unassuming _look_.

That look that Lee Howon has now come to associate with Lee Sungjong, his college dormmate of two years. That look that Sungjong always gives when Howon asked for notes to that one lecture he had missed. That look Sungjong had given when Howon first asked if they could room together again for the following academic year and then the next. That turn of the brow and quirk of only one corner of his lips when Howon had decided they share toothpaste and towels and clothes; when Howon purposefully moves around their room so that their arms will brush, or legs will touch; when Howon clears his schedule so that they can spend a day together doing nothing but talk and eat junk food and candy; when Sungjong doesn’t want to get out of bed to go to class so Hoya takes it upon himself to sneak into the boy’s bed and press cold feet to his belly. It’s that look that Sungjong had given when Howon had first come out to him. That look when, just before Sungjong had embraced him, he said it didn’t change a thing between them. That look before they started crying together like the men they are and Sungjong had apologized again and again for all the pain and hurt that Howon had been feeling, and Hoya’s heart had fluttered. It was that look Sungjong had given him, that day, when Howon first said he loved him.

“I love you,” Howon says, “Sungjong-ah.”

Sungjong hadn’t understood the confession the first time either.

“I love you, too, hyung.”

Howon wants to cry. Sungjong says those words like he's seen him say to his brother.

“No, Sungjong.”

And suddenly Howon is throwing himself at Sungjong’s feet and ignores the yelp of concern when his knees crash onto the floor. His hands wrap around the younger boy’s wrists, gentle so as not to hurt but firm so he won’t scoot away.

“Not like that, Sungjong-ah.” Howon sounds as if he’s pleading. “Not like a hyung. Not like a dongsaeng. I- I love you like…”

Sungjong’s large eyes widen even further and his lips (his beautiful and pink lips) part. Something has finally clicked. Howon’s mouth goes dry.

“…like a man,” Hoya finishes. Softer. Like he’s afraid that any louder, Sungjong will be scared away. “I love you like a man.”

Sungjong’s face is only a breath away, and though their eyes never part from each other, Howon does everything to not let his body lean in any further.

“Oh.”

The window is closed. The summer night breeze is trapped outside. But the room feels too humid, too hot. Suddenly, his body is completely flushed, cheeks heated, and the hands he has firmly wrapped around the younger boy’s wrists are clammy.

“Hyung…” And yet, Sungjong does not pull away. “I’m so sorry.”

Sungjong’s voice is breathy, airy. It floats between them and Howon opens his mouth at first as if to catch it.

“Sungjong-ah…”

Howon doesn’t realize he’s started to cry till Sungjong lifts a slender hand to wipe them away. He doesn’t remove himself from Howon’s hold, just rests a thumb against the older boy’s cheek. Hoya wants to look away, to turn and not have to see just how tender and apologetic Sungjong looks at him because Hoya doesn’t want tenderness and apologies when all he wants is-

“Can I kiss you?”

The words leave Howon’s lips and he wishes for nothing more that it wasn’t his voice that filled the silence.

He wishes it just as much as he wishes there wasn’t _that_ look Sungjong gave in his hesitance to nod his head. And how he wishes that Sungjong had leaned in, too. Howon wishes that when he presses his lips to Sungjong’s, that it isn’t just him who tentatively sucks at the boy’s upper lip. He wishes that it wasn’t just his hands that had come up to gently cup the younger’s cheeks, or that it was only his breath he was tasting, or only his heart that is racing. He wishes Sungjong won’t pull away. But he does.

And perhaps it was unfair, but Lee Howon wished for a lot of things when it came to Lee Sungjong.

Like how he wishes, with every fiber of his being, that when Sungjong leans back and removes Howon’s hands from the sides of his face, that Sungjong would not look at him the way he does. It isn’t _that_ look (because Howon wishes in that moment that it were), but a _look_. It isn’t questioning, it isn’t unassuming. It’s knowing, and tender, and gentle and…

“I’m sorry,” Sungjong manages to say. He’s smiling but his eyes are apologetic. “I’m just…”

His voice trails and eyes flutter down. Almost as if he were ashamed.

“…not like that.” Hoya finishes for him.

The brows turn and both corners of his lips quirk up. And Howon’s heart sinks.

“I’m so sorry, hyung.” Sungjong says. His voice barely above a whisper.

“No, Sungjong-ah,” Howon says. “It isn’t your fault.”

He stands, and notices that Sungjong’s legs are pressed firmly together. Howon wonders if they had always been like that (he knows the answer, he just doesn’t want to admit it).

“Do you want some time alone?” He hears Sungjong ask. “Do you want me to leave for a little bit?”

There is such care and tenderness and concern in the younger’s voice that that feeling of frustration and desperation are bubbling back. And Howon just doesn’t think it’s fair. He doesn’t think it’s fair that a boy like Lee Sungjong – who has a smile as bright as the starts and eyes wide like the moon – can just come into his life; a boy like Lee Sungjong who knows all the steps to every girl group song, and dances with all the fluidity and curves he was graced with; a boy like Lee Sungjong who has an attitude with such snark and sass and confidence, with a heart that is as compassionate as it is strong; Howon thinks it’s entirely unfair that a boy as perfect as Lee Sungjong would lodge his way so perfectly into his life and yet…

Howon isn’t sure what his answer was. But he finds himself alone in their dorm room none the less. His head buried in a pillow, blankets wrapped tightly around his body.

He doesn’t cry anymore. Because a part of Howon always knew. He just wished it weren’t so.

That no matter how much he wished, God couldn’t make the perfect boy that was Lee Sungjong perfect enough to like men the way Lee Howon liked them.

Sungjong comes back hours later, when he thinks Howon is asleep.

“I’m so sorry, hyung.”

Howon wishes he didn’t love Lee Sungjong. _Not like that._

**Author's Note:**

> *le gasp!* a notgay!Sungjong!
> 
> I have a lot of anxieties with posting this fic. Mostly stemming from a very weird moral code of mine which makes me feel weird about writing and reading fanfiction about real people (I don't even like doing it for characters of live action shows or movies). But then again, I don't really "stan" celebrities and yet here I am stanning Infinite. 
> 
> I also am a little worried about being cis-female writing about mlm romance, because while love is love, certain nuances of relationships are different due to the society we live in. Anyways... Sungjong-centric fics seem to be lacking so... my hand slipped.


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